Fade to grey

Sportsmen are a breed apart. Elsewhere, youthful genius may mature into withering mastery. Playwrights, composers, sculptors, thinkers and artists may pass through various stages, exploring their gift, challenging orthodoxy, reaching high, sinking low and then emerging with something gained and the world still at their feet. Although suffering from a sense of impending doom, as all such talents must, they know that the future spreads out before them and that they can continue to pursue their gift till they breathe their last. It is a privilege unknown in sport.

Among novelists and musicians, the later work may be their finest, a culmination of everything they have gathered along the way. Age smiles upon them. Passing years add weight to the light touch of youth. Although the rhymes and tunes may not come so easily, still they are awaiting discovery. Hope springs eternal. Often the mature artist is more satisfying than the promising nouveau because he or she does not try so hard to impress.

In their early incarnations, gifted writers may try farce, comedy, tragedy, drama. Knowing no containment, resisting all restraint, they express themselves in various forms. Later they start to contemplate their legacy, and before it is too late, before they go the way of all flesh, they set out to tell the world the things they know. Age's authority allows them to unleash their hidden power. Sportsmen cannot take these steps. It must all happen at once, and so every career moves along at a pace that permits no reflection. There is no final word, just an ending that not even genius can resist.

The Tempest was a profound statement of Shakespeare's acquired understanding. Arguably, he cast himself in the play, speaking as the bereft philosopher, the sagacious observer, passing on his experiences, conveying his insights while time permitted. But then he was a man of the mind. Maturity was his friend. The thickening of the body was an irrelevance.

Tomorrow does not exist in athletic endeavours. Sportsmen must find their truest expression at once. They are exposed and then eliminated before life's taxes have been paid. Sportsmen miss much through not being able to grow old gracefully, on the field at any rate. Always they must be young. When the search begins for the contemplated form, their days are almost over. Sportsmen envy other performers this precious gift of time.

Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar enjoy no such luxury. To them, the mastery that they have known, the glorious feeling of the game flowing through them without encumbrance, the sensation they want to capture and know forever, the feeling others seek and find only in teasing acquaintance, must these days seem as fleeting as a thought. Most sportsmen resemble the cicada, some species of which stay underground for 15 years and then emerge for six weeks of loud and glorious life before passing into the night.

Nothing lasts long in sport. Always there is today and, for the lucky ones, tomorrow, and then it is over. Not even the batting geniuses of the age can turn back the clock. And it all happens in a flash. A sporting day can seem to last forever; a career can pass like a child's frown. Only records last forever. That is why sportsmen take them so seriously. They prove they existed, mattered, could play a bit. They prove it was worth all that damn trouble.

Never mind that it has been 15 years since Lara and Tendulkar started to mesmerise the world. Never mind that it has been a long time and many extraordinary deeds have been done. No one is ready for the end. Always the player yearns for more. That is why they come back, the boxers and the tennis players, those who can because the decision belongs to them. It is not money, or not just the money, it is yearning. But the feeling does not come back because it depends upon things that change, muscles that deteriorate, eyes that deceive. Sportsmen do not often lose the desire. They slow down or fall apart.

But the ageing player may not sense any difference. In a way, that is the devil of it. Age creeps up on sportsmen. It is not that a curtain comes down upon a career. Sport is not as sudden or as gentle as that. Rather it is a slow process, a gradual fading. Nor can the player tell that the slide has begun. After all, he has known bad patches before, heard a thousand concerned whispers, and has learned not to panic but instead to withdraw into himself in search of the old powers. Great sportsmen listen to themselves.

Age brings understanding to the thinker, the craftsman, the artist. To most sportsmen, it brings defeat. To them, time is not a friend bestowing gifts, bringing wisdom and providing an opportunity to hone skills, but a reminder that the eternal present of athletic life is the merest illusion. Almost from the start, their clock is ticking. Children may deem themselves immortal. Once whiskers start to grow, the sportsman knows that already time is running out.

Now Lara and Tendulkar find themselves battering their brains in an attempt to goad renewal from tired minds and weary limbs. Everyone talks about lost genius, in Lara's case even squandered genius, but this is neither right nor fair. Although the sporting gift is not to be trifled with, it is not immutable. Like beauty, it is transient for it lasts as long as youth itself.

It is strange that so much is expected of sporting genius, as if God has transposed not an astonishing talent but his entire self. Sportsmen are not alone in trying to prolong the youth whose passing signals the end of their most joyous period. Supporters, too, expect their champions to stay the same, like cartoon characters, a requirement that is not imposed upon sons and daughters. Perhaps, they think sportsmen live on another planet.

Lara could not advance unchanged into adulthood let alone eternity. He could not forever be the imp slashing misbegotten Australians around Sydney. It is not easy to score runs or bat brilliantly for days. He just made it look easy and then was blamed when his powers deserted him. Nor is Tendulkar a machine or still the tousled boy who used to arrive at Shivaji Park every dawn. He is a fully grown man with much on his mind. To expect him to bat the same way, the fearless way, as he did in Perth all those years ago, is to undertake an exercise in futility. In between, he has discovered the perils of life and the pressures of expectation. His body is heavier, his eyes are not as sharp, his nerve is less reliable. He is human, a fact that ought to provoke not regret but a greater appreciation of his feats and carriage.

Of course, the genius of Lara and Tendulkar has passed. Arguably it happened several years ago and was camouflaged by occasional rallies from the quixotic Lara, and the sound technique and devotion to duty of the Indian. Their exceptional gifts were sustained by alert eyes, unfailing judgment, fresh minds, bold decisions and swift responses. Until recently, most of Test cricket's mightiest innings had been played by young men. Don Bradman, Len Hutton, Hanif Mohammad, Garry Sobers, and Lara himself were in their early twenties when they constructed their masterpieces.

Nothing lasts forever. As they enter their last phase, Lara and Tendulkar try to accommodate both their particular talent and their reduced selves. Lesser players passed this way long ago. Greatness demands intensity. Mediocrity requires endless scrutiny. Struggling players know about nuts and bolts. For them, it is not just a matter of switching on the engine. Long before, they had to take their games apart and rebuild them into a proper working order. They are better prepared for decline than geniuses. Throughout, they have been battling to keep failure at bay. They know how to do it, know what is involved. Geniuses don't need to think along these lines. Of course, they must work and fight, but the discovery of vulnerability comes as a shock, to them and their admirers.

Not that Lara and Tendulkar are the same. The Trinidadian is a deeply flawed, though eminently plausible, man, with a strong will and an extraordinary ability to rouse himself when all appears lost. All through, he has played in bursts, and his inconsistency has been a burden as his brilliance has been an inspiration. He has won Test matches, and sometimes even series, off his own bat. Goliaths have been slain. Between times he has failed miserably, and his team has gone down with him.

Now Lara is enduring another slump. It is nothing new. Doubtless, his reflexes have slowed somewhat and certainly, he has put on weight, but he has always batted in patches. He can seem frustratingly flighty. Perhaps, he has one more surge in him, at the 2007 World Cup. He has a sense of history, relishes the roar, and may yet be able to bend a few more matches to his will. Meanwhile, he will bide his time. Instinctively he knows that he has only a few more great innings left in him. He will not waste them. Genius does not serve. It is served.

Tendulkar is another case. Apart from anything else, he is several years younger. Yet it is not merely a matter of age. Tendulkar has been at the forefront of cricket and Indian life since he was a slip of a lad. He has survived the expectations of millions, has scored incomparably more hundreds in international cricket than anyone else, has played so many matches, and always with all eyes upon him. Is it not possible that he is worn out?

Soldiers, firemen, doctors, policemen and so forth can suffer from overexposure. Tendulkar, too, has never had the chance to unwind. Eventually, the soul must cry enough. It is easily forgotten that Bradman himself, the smiling Don, endured terrible illnesses during his career. Easily forgotten, too, that players of previous generations enjoyed winter breaks and hardly batted at all when the blight of war fell upon the world.

To the dismay of some observers, Tendulkar has responded to his travails by playing a more cautious game. What was he supposed to do? He is not a fool or an innocent but a seasoned campaigner, a professional sportsman, who knows full well the value of runs on the board. Even

Lara has made some concessions to age by reducing and straightening his back-lift and by taking a longer look at the bowling. Admittedly, he waited till Sobers proferred this advice but that is the nature of the man. Arguably, Tendulkar also needs to rethink his game. His habit of leaving his back foot on leg stump widens his range but it means that the stumps are not fully covered. Tendulkar was bound to take a more measured approach. Anything less was a denial of the mind, a rejection of the maturity all must embrace. Denied the majesty available in other walks of life, sporting genius must recognise and respond to its slow and inevitable loss. The older dancer does not attempt the pirouettes of uncompromised youth; the batsman cannot attack with the same bravado. The odds have changed. And the brain demands results.

Neither Lara or Tendulkar can ever be quite the same again. Sportsmen fade away. Talent dwindles. Everything is temporary in sport. Nor will they be permitted a Tempest because sport encourages competition not contemplation. But there is no reason to regret anything. Both players have illuminated the game. And both may stir again as experience pulls its weight. Although there can be no going back, Tendulkar, especially, has more runs in him. Revival is impossible but the master of Mumbai knows a thing or two, and might yet overcome the heaviness in his mind.